Some have asked me why it matters that Sheriff Piper claims not to use his official email address.

One of the reasons it matters is because his claim only came after it was discovered that Sheriff Piper had not complied with demands by the Georgia Attorney General Sam Olen’s office to release all official records pertaining to the Sheriff Department’s loss of its national accreditation (as you can see HERE).

When an open records request was submitted for all documents regarding our Sheriff Department’s failure to meet even basic standards needed to retain its CALEA national accreditation, Sheriff Piper and lawyers from his office initially fought back claiming they did not have to release the information.

And when the Attorney General’s office stepped in and demanded the release of those documents, Sheriff Piper and his lawyers failed to provide certain key evidence relating to the CALEA failure.

It was discovered that CALEA’s executive director had emailed a status report to Sheriff Piper that outlined how the Sheriff’s Department was failing to meet basic accreditation standards.

When confronted again by the Attorney General’s office (as you can see HERE.), lawyers claimed Sheriff Piper had not seen the document in question because the Sheriff, “does not utilize email communications even though he has an email address assigned to him,” and that they could not provide the document because it would have been destroyed from Piper’s inbox as well as the county’s servers (as you can see HERE).

As the former Chief of Detectives for Forsyth County, I can always tell when someone isn’t telling the entire story. The cover up always leads to more questions, which lead to more answers that just don’t add up.

So the question now is: if Sheriff Piper did not use his email containing the CALEA report, who then authorized the destruction of significant documents from his email and additionally removed it from the county servers?

The fact is that we will not know the answer to that question without the consent of the Sheriff.

However, you have my word that as your Sheriff, this would never happen. Even if mistakes are made, my Sheriff’s Office will always operate with full transparency and accountability to the taxpayers. Your tax dollars pay for this office, and you deserve nothing less.